Last Looks

by Howard Michael Gould

Waldo waited until the crowd thinned before giving up. He tried the classroom where Jayne had prepped the kids, but it was shut down for the night, then tried her own classroom and found the same. He decided Jayne’s no-show had been just another flirtation, designed to torque his curiosity and desire.

  Well, it worked. He got his bike and headed for her apartment.

  * * *

  —

  He knocked on her door. No answer. He tried the knob and was surprised that it opened.

  The lights were on. The room looked more or less as it had when he’d been there before but something felt off. It took a moment for him to finger it: a hook on an empty wall, where that country lithograph had hung before. He went into her bedroom and straight for the closet. It was empty. His stomach dropped.

  Skipping the reception and driving here while Waldo biked would have given her maybe a forty-five-minute jump on him, too little time to pack and load her car; she had to have started earlier. Bracing her in the afternoon had probably rattled her—not enough to miss the play she’d rehearsed so hard with her kids, but enough to blow out as soon as it was over.

  Other than clothes and toiletries, she’d left most everything, even the Savannah Moon DVDs and books. The boy fishing by the covered bridge had meant more to her. Perplexed and disconsolate, ashamed and apprehensive, Waldo inventoried the room, wondering what else she’d been willing to leave behind. On her bed, atop the pillow, he saw a white letter-size envelope, with his name written in a girlish hand.

  It contained one item: a pink disposable razor, a women’s Schick Quattro.

  He held on to it while he examined the rest of the apartment, but before he left he tossed it into the garbage can under the kitchen sink, a Thing he had no room for.

  * * *

  —

  He didn’t want to tell Alastair that Jayne had run off, but he didn’t want not to tell him either, so back at the house that night he avoided his host, and pretended to sleep late the next morning. He only lit out for the Stoddard School after he was certain Alastair had already dropped Gaby off and was well on his way to the studio.

  There he checked Jayne’s classroom and saw the expected substitute trying to settle the kids, still worked up from their big night. He crossed to the main office, asked to see the headmaster and was told to wait. Twenty minutes later an assistant told him to take the stairs to the top floor and then a right. The woman at the desk in Hexter’s outer office told him to go right in.

  Hexter was seated at his desk. Waldo closed the door behind him and without pleasantries said, “Jayne White’s disappeared.”

  “I don’t know about disappeared. She did call in sick this morning.”

  “She cleared out of her apartment. I thought she might have said something to you first. Given your . . . personal history.”

  Hexter flinched, then went with a slippery nondenial. “Someone’s been gossiping. Another teacher, I assume.” Waldo kept silent, letting Hexter twist and seeing where he’d take it. “The rest of the elementary faculty wasn’t happy I hired her. Trust me, though: a lot of what people say about Jayne’s past is exaggerated.”

  Waldo had lain awake the night before, chewing on Jayne’s flight and what had triggered it. She’d packed in the afternoon, before the play, before Waldo had challenged her on her relationships with Alastair and the others, before Waldo had called her on being at the Pinch house on the night of the murder. All he’d dinged her with at that point was the video, but it was enough to spook her. “If you don’t know all of it,” he said now to Hexter, “you should.” He took the yellow envelope out of his backpack and held it out in front of him.

  Hexter came around from behind his desk, reached into the envelope and took out Jayne’s DVD. A cloud passed over his face. He shoved the video back into the envelope and thrust it at Waldo. “I assume our business is finished.”

  There was something discordant about the reaction. Waldo recognized some similarity to his own—he was sure that, like himself, Hexter hadn’t seen this Jayne before—but Waldo had been curious, at least, crestfallen but at the same time darkly fascinated; this man displayed not a whit of that. True, Hexter was older, but not a prude, at least not too prudish to have had his own affair with—

  The realization popped out of Waldo’s mouth before he’d fully processed the thought. “You weren’t sleeping with her. You didn’t push that away like a lover.” Hexter froze, caught between a lie that would tarnish him and a truth that would be worse. Hoping to coax him toward the second, Waldo said, “Tell me about your girl.”

  The headmaster went to the window, surveyed his campus awhile. At last he said, “I was divorced with a child before I was twenty. I didn’t see her for years. Last summer her mother tracked me down and told me that Rosanna—‘Jayne’—needed help.”

  “So you brought her here to teach kindergarten, even though she wasn’t qualified.”

  “She’d been in Florida. No one here knew her, or even about her. Teachers at private schools don’t need accreditation.” He added, “Of course, I had to let someone go to open the spot for her. At the last minute, unfortunately.”

  “And the other teachers didn’t like that. Especially when they realized she had no idea what she was doing.”

  “You don’t need much knowledge to handle a kindergarten curriculum. Caring about the children is more important, frankly. Say what you will about her, she did care.”

  “And you let the teachers gossip.”

  Hexter turned back to him with a wan smile. “Rumors of an affair almost gave me a cachet. But hiring my daughter? That would be unsurvivable.” He went back to his desk and sat. Again Waldo waited him out. “She did call me last night, from the road. She said that you’d figured out about her past, and more, and that if she stayed here, our relationship was bound to be discovered. She ran off to protect me.”

  Maybe, Waldo thought. “Did she say what the ‘more’ was?” Hexter shook his head. Waldo returned the envelope with the DVD to his backpack.

  Sipping from a coffee mug with both hands like a convalescent, Hexter looked older and smaller, the last of his haughtiness dried up and blown away. He’d made a small compromise to rescue his Rosanna from the degraded mess her life had become and now knew he might never see her again and could still be rewarded for it with the loss of his career. What men will do for their daughters. Alastair and Gaby fluttered across Waldo’s mind.

  Hexter looked up at Waldo, a supplicant now. “I know you don’t owe me anything, Mr. Waldo, but can I rely on you to keep our secret? It’s a favor I wouldn’t know how to repay . . . but perhaps you’d consider doing it for Jayne.”

  For Jayne. He’d called her Jayne. The woman was no longer there to work her magic on Waldo, but her father hoped the name still would.

  Why had she gone, really? If it was going to come down to the hope that Waldo would keep their secret anyway, couldn’t she have just stayed? She had to know that running off in the night in the aftermath of a murder would look suspicious, maybe even incriminating.

  Then again, whom would it look incriminating to? Nobody was paying any attention to her, save Waldo and the various flames who so badly wanted their affairs kept secret. Which meant Waldo was the only one who might conceivably hurt her.

  For Jayne. It’s what she was counting on.

  Waldo walked out of the office, leaving the headmaster’s request to hang there. He trotted down the stairs and left the building by the stairwell exit, then circled back to the entrance to unlock his bike.

  He wondered where she’d run to. Where do you go to reinvent yourself, after you can’t reinvent yourself in L.A.?

  Anyway, Jayne was gone now, really gone.

  And just like that, his radar was no longer jammed.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Waldo deciphered the signatures on the football: Bart Starr, John Elway, Terry Bradshaw . . .r />
  “Every quarterback who’s won two Super Bowls.”

  “Really.” It wasn’t enough to make him rethink the Things, but he had to admit that as purposeless keepsakes went, this one was pretty impressive. Actually, offices didn’t get much more impressive than Sikorsky’s in any way: floor-to-ceiling windows on two long sides, magnificent Oriental rugs, deep blue leather seats around a low walnut coffee table, handcrafted power desk of inlaid woods. Personal mementos were confined to a tall and elegant bookcase, except for this football, which merited its own pedestal.

  Sikorsky said, “Commissioner gave it to me when we closed the last NFL contract. You get nice souvenirs in this job.”

  “I’ll say. May I?” Sikorsky gestured permission and Waldo picked the ball up and studied it. Not many names, but the best names: Joe Montana, Troy Aikman . . .

  “I have a table read in fifteen minutes.”

  “Sorry,” Waldo said, and got to it. “I’ve hit a point where I thought I should come to you, since you’re the one paying for my time. We hadn’t really talked about an endgame for this.”

  “Do we need to? Are you finished with us?”

  “Pretty close. I know Alastair didn’t kill his wife.”

  “He didn’t?” Sikorsky looked like he didn’t trust the assertion. “Do you know who did?”

  “I think so.” Waldo spun the football in his hands. “There’s a young woman named Jayne White—that isn’t her real name, but it’s what she’s been going by. She’s the Pinch girl’s kindergarten teacher.”

  “Kindergarten teacher?” Sikorsky looked even more skeptical. “Why would she kill Monica?”

  “Well, she was a lot more than that. She and Alastair were having an affair. You don’t look surprised.”

  “They had a complicated marriage.”

  “So you knew them well.”

  Sikorsky shrugged. “You go to so many events together—wrap parties, award shows—you can’t help but get to know each other. A little, at least.” He took a deep breath and exhaled through pursed lips. “I’m so relieved it wasn’t Alastair.”

  “I’m sure you are.” Waldo lobbed him the football, a perfect underhand spiral.

  Sikorsky smiled and tossed it back overhand, starting a catch, the two men flinging the precious ball back and forth across the length of the oversize office, almost in celebration. “Have you told Fontella yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Waldo. “Thing is, this Jayne White’s disappeared. I’d love to find her before we take the next step. Did you know her, by any chance?”

  Sikorsky bobbed his shoulders a couple of times to show he was reluctant to say it. “I knew about her.”

  “Did you know Alastair had gotten her pregnant? I’ve been wondering if that’s a thing many people were aware of.”

  “Not many,” Sikorsky said, tossing the ball. “Hardly anyone, I think.”

  “But you were aware.”

  “I guess I did know them pretty well.”

  “What was Monica Pinch’s reaction, when she found out Jayne was pregnant?”

  “Shit, what do you think her reaction was? She was beside herself.”

  “I bet. She probably pressed Alastair even harder to quit the show and move back to England. That was a big thing with her, wasn’t it?”

  “Was it? I guess I didn’t know them that well.”

  “But you knew about the awards—the ‘Shakespeare Awards’ you talked about. They’re called ‘Oliviers,’ by the way. You said they were in the bedroom closet.”

  “Figure of speech. They could have been in the attic for all I knew. I just knew that Alastair didn’t like to keep them out.”

  “They actually were in the bedroom closet.”

  “So?”

  “Alastair said he didn’t know where they were.”

  “Alastair says a lot of things. Strikes a lot of poses. You must know that by now.”

  “True. But another thing I know is that Monica didn’t find out Jayne White was pregnant until the night she died. So if she talked to you about it, it must have been that night.”

  “You said the murderer was Jayne White.” He slung back the football with some mustard on it.

  “Actually, I said I knew who the murderer was.” Waldo fired it back just as hard; that’s the way the catch continued. “I was also wondering about your watch.”

  “What about my watch?”

  “Warren Gomes—this lawyer the cops said I murdered? Did you hear about that, by the way?”

  “I did. I wasn’t pleased.”

  “Me neither. Anyway, Gomes had the same kind of watch—what’s it called? Kudoke?”

  Annoyance mounting, Sikorsky said, “Kudoke Skeleton. They’re getting popular.”

  “I researched them—they’re individually made; no two are identical. The one he was wearing looked a lot like yours.”

  “He wasn’t wearing mine,” he said, all impatience and finality. He rolled up his sleeve and showed Waldo his watch. “Except when I sleep or shower, mine’s been on my wrist every minute since my anniversary. Lot of trouble with the missus if it wasn’t. They all look similar—you should know that, too, from your research.” He threw Waldo the football like he wasn’t expecting it back. “We need to wrap this up—my table read’s on the other side of the lot.”

  Waldo said, “You asked Fontella what time it was.”

  “When?”

  “At the courthouse, after Alastair’s arraignment. You had to get to a meeting. I was surprised that a guy with a fancy watch like that would ever ask what time it was—I’d think you’d want any excuse to look at it. Then I saw you didn’t have it on.” He tossed Sikorsky the football again, back to underhand. Not expecting the throw, Sikorsky bobbled it but made the catch.

  Sikorsky held on to Waldo’s gaze too. He said, “Why don’t you tell me exactly what it is you’re thinking?” and winged the ball as sharply as he could, face high; Waldo’s reflexes were a match and he caught it cleanly.

  So Waldo told him everything he was thinking.

  He told him that he was thinking Sikorsky knew what Monica Pinch kept in her closet because he’d been spending time in her bedroom while Alastair was spending time with Jayne. And that the night Monica found out Alastair had gotten Jayne pregnant, Alastair passed out and she started climbing the walls and finally called Sikorsky. Though Sikorsky had told the police that the call that night had been from Alastair to gripe about candy bars, Waldo was thinking the call was in fact from Monica, in keeping with a practice of calling her lover, Sikorsky, from the family landline, which would always give them cover—as it did here—should anyone happen to look at their phone records.

  Waldo said he couldn’t know the content of the conversation they had on the phone, but his guess was that Monica told Sikorsky she was going to confess to Alastair about their affair, to get Alastair to quit the show and move back to England like she’d been wanting. But Sikorsky couldn’t afford to lose Alastair, not with Jamshidi’s takeover hanging over him. In fact, he couldn’t even afford the scandal if it went public.

  “I’m thinking,” Waldo told Sikorsky now, “you drove over there and the argument kept going, and I’m thinking you picked up that Olivier Award and hit her in the head with it. Killed her.”

  He paused; there had been a bit of conjecture rolled into that and Waldo figured if he’d gotten a big piece wrong it would draw a reaction. But Sikorsky remained stock-still. Waldo took it as a general confirmation and kept going. “You wiped down everything you could remember touching, but the Olivier had been sitting on a wooden table, and that had bloodstains on it you couldn’t clean. I’m thinking you were worried some of that might be your blood, so you moved the table to the master bedroom, moved the table that was there to the guest room, set the alarm on the way out the door, ditched the award in a Dumpster somewhere, and left
poor Alastair to wake up and take the rap. You got a little lucky Alastair was still drunk enough to futz with the dead bolt when he was opening the door for the cops.”

  Sikorsky grinned and put on that killer charm again. “Very creative. I should give you a pilot deal. But you’ve got a big hole in your plot: why would I sabotage the biggest asset on my network?”

  “You figured Alastair would get off; this is L.A.—the star always gets off. Even if he doesn’t, you walk away clean. In the meantime, you told me yourself: the scandal made the show twice as valuable. And the more publicity, the bigger the windfall. So you brought in the lawyer who’d make the most noise.” Waldo spun the ball in his hands. “And then, even better, the investigator who’d make the most noise. I’m sure Alastair was paying his lawyer himself, but you’re the one who hired me. Because Fontella would’ve hired someone else. She was telling you all along I’d be a shitty choice—I’d never been a PI, the cops hated me, I was so out of practice I’d be useless. Turns out, those were exactly the reasons you liked me—because I’d be the last detective who’d ever figure out that you killed Monica Pinch. And Warren Gomes.”

  “Oh, I killed him, too? Remind me: why’d I do that?”

  “Gomes was working for Jamshidi, digging up dirt on you he could use toward the takeover. But when Gomes found out you were sleeping with your biggest star’s wife—well, that kind of information was too valuable to waste on Jamshidi. Especially after she wound up dead. So he blackmailed you, even made you cough up that beautiful watch, which you couldn’t resist taking back after you shot him. One less thing to explain to the missus.” He threw the football to Sikorsky.

  Sikorsky said, “Lot of moving parts there. You must have been pretty sure of yourself to walk in here with a pitch like that,” and fired back the ball.

  “Actually, I only walked in ninety-eight percent sure.” He winged the ball at Sikorsky.

  “Is that so? What’s the other two percent?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were a lefty.”